What’s NaNoWriMo?

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a writing ‘competition’ that spans over a month every November. Anyone can join (it’s freeee) and begin working on whatever writing project they’re interested in with the aim to hit 50k words by the end of the month. Anyone who reaches the 50k target is basically a winner. NaNoWriMo usually has cool offers for winners like 50% off Scrivener and there are also lots of benefits for members too!

How did it help?

I took part in NaNoWriMo in November ’16 and wrote about 35k words of my work in progress (WIP). 35k words was a lot for me and I was surprised I managed to write that much in a month. I finished the first draft of my WIP by the end of January, the process was a lot slower without NaNoWriMo because I didn’t have the little progress bar pushing me on to write more and more. I don’t know how some writers speed through 50k words or more a month, they’re probably part unicorn or something.

So clearly I wasn’t messing about when I said I wanted to switch up my blog. I wanted to rebrand everything to just ‘Huriyah’ but someone took the name on Twitter (it’s an egg account), and someone has also bought the domain name (WHICH THEY’RE NOT EVEN USING). Don’t you hate it when that happens? You’d think having a unique name would come useful somehow, but nooope. Anyway, I’m sticking to sugarquills,but now I’ve gone and added some bells and whistles like my own email account (huriyah @ sugarquills .co.uk), a new theme and logo banner thing.

Oh look, another round-up post. Kinda. The last time I wrote a round-up post about the books I was going read was in February, but I only read three out of six books I mentioned in that post (life happened/I got distracted).

I’ve decided to keep this one short. Pachinko and Memoirs of a Polar Bear were on my February list and hey ho, it’s almost April and they’re still on my list. I’m cheating a bit because I’m more than halfway through Pachinko anyway (but to be fair I never want this amazing book to end). I’m also reading an eBook copy of Difficult Women by Roxane Gay, which is another fantastic read, and why didn’t anyone tell me about it book before?

A small band of cats lives in the labyrinthine alleys and ruins of Nizamuddin, an old neighbourhood in Delhi. Miao, the clan elder, a wise, grave Siamese; Katar, a cat loved by his followers and feared by his enemies; Hulo, the great warrior tom; Beraal, the beautiful queen, swift and deadly when challenged; Southpaw, the kitten whose curiosity can always be counted on to get him into trouble… Unfettered and wild, these and the other members of the tribe fear no one, go where they will, and do as they please. Until, one day, a terrified orange-coloured kitten with monsoon green eyes and remarkable powers, lands in their midst—setting off a series of extraordinary events that will change their world forever. – Goodreads.